Wednesday, March 15, 2006

But nothing can top the Dickinsonian treat offered recently by my blog friend Tom Sutpen at If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats. Gentlemen, and ladies, take your heart medicine, still yourselves, click here, and be sure to take time to thank Tom for his terrific site and his terrific taste.

I used to eat occasionally at a restaurant called Mary's in the West Village, I think it's gone now. It was in an old brownstone and had several dining areas. When I went with a crowd, we used to request the Angie Dickinson Room, a small private dining area decorated with pictures of you-know-who. The waiters told me that Ms Dickinson herself had stopped by a few times, to see how her room was doing.

And, you know, BIG BAD MAMA is actually a pretty good movie, even beyond its obvious charms and attempts to cash in on the BLOODY MAMA/BONNIE AND CLYDE drive-in aesthetic. Steve Carver was one of the best directors of the Corman quickie school, and he filmed that sucker in about two weeks. Watch it again and look at how well put together it is (not just Angie!), how the scenes cut together nicely, how well he frames the compositions and how the sets effectively capture the period feel. Man, that's when a B-movie didn't need a $100 million budget to get its point across. BIG BAD MAMA has it all: hot-dang action, ribald humor and, of course, plenty of guns blazing and breasts flashing. For rock fans, it's even got Graham Nash's future wife in the nude. And, of course, it's got the man himself: Shatner. On an amusing commentary track between Corman and Dickinson on the recent DVD of BIG BAD MAMA, Angie is quite proud of the movie and pretty blase about the nudity. Only one scene upsets her: the scene where Shatner is naked with her and rubbing himself all over her back. But who wouldn't be freaked out by that!

Ha ha--Little Round Headed Boy, you've convinced me: I'm putting it on my queue immediately! I don't know how I managed to miss seeing it all this time--I do remember it being advertised on TV--but it sounds well worth a look. And yes, given Angie's experience with Shatner, I admire her even more for her intestinal fortitude!

Blaaagh: I was thinking the same thing when I was going over those Police Woman episodes. And if my calculations are correct, she was around 45 at the time they were shot! Hooray for middle age!

Maya: Shall you send it, or shall I?

Campaspe: I don't know if you know Buca di Beppo, a chain of spectacularly gaudy Italian restaurants that seem to be proliferating like wildfire (out here on the West Coast, anyway), but there's a bunch of rooms toward the back of the one in Universal City that some coworkers and I tend to gather at during the Christmas season, and one of those rooms, a big circular place just right for our group, is called the Pope Room, decorated with pictures and statues of popes past and (I'm presuming now) present. That's okay and all... but why am I suddenly seized with the surely heretical notion of bombarding Buca di Beppo with a letter-writing campaign? Out with the pope, in with Angie!

TLRHB: I just cleared out two movies from my Netflix queue last night and will have a great New World Pictures/AIP double feature coming next, hopefully on the same day: Big Bad Mama and Monte Hellman's Cockfighter, neither of which I have ever seen. I've heard plenty of good things about Big Bad Mama and Carver-- did he not direct Drum, the sequel to Mandingo? What ever happened to him? I appreciate your mentioning a bit about him and the movie-- now I'm really excited to see it, and to hear that commentary. But William Shatner naked... that's enough to induce a round of therapy sessions for me, 30 years removed and in the privacy and protection of my own living room. That Angie Dickinson must be made of resilient stuff indeed! I can't wait to see her firing a tommy gun!

Personally, I'd welcome any occasion to rifle through the photo galleries for treasures like these. I don't know how many others would be, but I'd be up for a Angie Blog-a-Thon, even if it were a mini version... !

Dennis -- totally off topic, but knowing what a fan you are of Jonathan Glazer's BIRTH. He's directed his first music video in six years, for Massive Attack. You and other Glazer fans can watch it here:

Let me also vote early and vote often for a Mlle. Dickinson blog-a-thon.

A capital idea, chaps.

But how could you all have forgotten her work with Lewis Milestone? Crimeny, did Ocean's Eleven leave an impact on no one?

And yeah . . . that's a big 'affirmative' on Big Bad Mama from this corner. It may not have the rampant prurience of Bloody Mama, but I'd sooner see Angles Dickinson nude (even being rubbed up on by Shatner . . . one shudders at the mere mention of it) than Shelley Winters circa 1968 anyday.

Now that I think of it, a general survey of what LRHB calls the 'drive-in aesthetic' might make an interesting blog-a-thon all by itsse'f.

Well, I'm certainly all in favor of it! This sounds great. There are, I'm sure, plenty of "angles" to be explored here. And my copy of Big Bad Mama is schedule to arrive from Netflix tomorrow. Perfect timing! And I second TAS: I think something interesting could be folded in about the drive-in aesthetic here too, unless everyone would rather keep it pure Angie.

Blaaagh, if you want to post something too, this space is yours! And anyone else who is blogless and cares to participate, that goes for you too.

Flickhead: I'll post something on this site too when we make the final decision. (Can you remind me of the date on the Ferrara Blog-a-Thon?)

TLRHB: If you wanna make that poster, I'd love to see it!

TAS: You post one incredibly stunning picture, and look what happens! :) It all started with your post and Flickhead's eloquent "sigh..."

To Angie Dickinson! (And to the drive-in aesthetic?) I'm really looking forward to reading these posts!

I thought Ferrara was the following Monday the 27th. I doubt I'll be able to participate if it's moved up.

Not sure what I'll have to contribute to a Dickinson Blog-a-Thon (perhaps a good excuse to watch the 1964 the Killers now that I've recently seen the 1946 version), but I'll aim for April 19th if that's the consensus.

april 19 is good with me. there's a good argument to be made to expand it to the notion of drive in movies.. but i'm in. i'll have to pass on ferrara. hard to find any of his movies beyond KING OF NEW YORK and BAD LIEUTENANT anywhere around me. i'd love to write about DANGEROUS GAME. oh well. i'll enjoy from the sidelines and comments sections.

Yeah, I was thinking that Ferrara was late April too. If Ferrara is this Wednesday, then I'm gonna have to take a pass on that one too (I'm up to my neck in two big things I'm trying to get into shape for next week.) But April 19 for Angie is A-OK with me!

Okay, Flickhead! Do you want to do a coordinated announcement, or just do one on your site? Either way, I'd like to encourage anyone who wants to chime in who doesn't have a blog to send their contributions to Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule and I'll post them here. April 19 it is!

Dennis, Flickhead — To get in the proper mood for the Angie Blog-A-Thon, go over to www.johnsolie.com. He's the Tuscon-based artist who seems to have done the poster art for a number of drive-in classics — he has posted his art for BIG BAD MAMA, but he also did the art for SOYLENT GREEN, CANDY STRIPE NURSES, SHAFT IN AFRICA, SHAFT'S BIG SCORE and TIDAL WAVE, starring Big Bad Papa, Lorne Greene! As you can tell from the BBM poster, he definitely dug the Angie "aesthetic."

I had the one-sheet for Shaft's Big Score! tacked up on my bedroom wall in the '70s and would stare at that for hours. There's a whole world of '60s and '70s movie poster art worth investigating, great, intense graphics by Solie, Frank Frazetta, Mort Drucker, Frank McGinnis...and some of their stuff is still amazing to look at.

I've put a notice on the Flickhead blog about Angie. Someone had mentioned David Thomson (Angie's his favorite actress), so I'll try to send him the link.